Threads Unpicked
Back in July at the Linen Biennale Launch event, Pamela Whitaker and Bridget Nugent, artists from the MSc Art Psychotherapy course at the Belfast School of Art, Ulster University, led guests and attendees in a short project, MATERIALisation.
This included preforming self-care rituals and a closing ceremony where they shared some readings and asked particpants to engage with an activity reflecting on on the role of material and fabric in our lives. As we approach the end of our three months of programming, their words still echo, reminding us that everyone has a relationship with textiles.
Words by Pamela Whitaker
Stitching is a way to mend, tailor and piece together fragments of experiences. Cloth can be considered an intimate overlay that wraps both our bodies and home with layers of story. As a method of mark making, sewing allows us to tuck into tactile relationships with fabric as a companion to our lives. Instinctive and improvised stitching can embellish clothing and domestic items, so that each becomes a story in a lived within journal.
Textiles portray a sense of ritual, making special everyday places through a quality of adornment and presence. Cloth enriches people, architecture, furniture and objects with significance.
Binding, stitching, knotting, and layering thoughts into a weave of cloth, conjures memory and the passage of time. The drawing of threads through cloth, the mending of frayed edges and the matting together of fibres are all physical experiences that translate a narrative into material form.
Cloth is intimate, another skin, a boundary and a caress. It designates function and also entwines a story.
Materialisation beckons becoming and an intention to make with the fabric of our lives. A composition made with fibres that are woven as a whole. Each strand a texture of experience and contribution to how cloth is our life companion.
